Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Stop Making These 3 Weight Loss Mistakes if You Want FAT Loss | Ep 407

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Stop Making These 3 Weight Loss Mistakes if You Want FAT Loss | Ep 407 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: If you're in the mode of trying to lose weight, maybe you are tracking your food, stepping on the scale, pushing yourself in the gym, but you hit a wall.
• 0:09
  Philip Pape: The scale isn't moving.
• 0:11
  Philip Pape: Or worse, you're making panicked decisions like slashing calories or adding more cardio and it's still not working.
• 0:17
  Philip Pape: This episode is for you.
• 0:19
  Philip Pape: Today I'm breaking down three weight loss traps that derail even motivated people right when they're trying to finish the year strong, and how you can avoid each one so you can actually build a leaner, stronger physique heading into 2026.
• 0:43
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, a show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency.
• 0:50
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and the creator of Fitness Lab, and we are in the final stretch of 2025.
• 0:58
  Philip Pape: I know a lot of you are determined to make progress on your body composition before the new year.
• 1:03
  Philip Pape: Maybe you started strong this year, you hit some bumps along the way, and now you're trying to figure out what is working versus what is all the noise out there.
• 1:12
  Philip Pape: So today I'm going to cover three specific traps that I see people fall into this time of year.
• 1:17
  Philip Pape: And in my teaser before the music, I mentioned the phrase weight loss.
• 1:22
  Philip Pape: I think I mentioned it twice.
• 1:23
  Philip Pape: And I did that for a reason because a lot of you are in that mode of weight loss.
• 1:27
  Philip Pape: And in the past, we've talked about the difference between weight loss and fat loss and body composition, which we're going to touch on that a little bit.
• 1:34
  Philip Pape: And I'll say that these are not obscure edge cases, edge cases.
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: These are the mistakes I'm talking about today are the big ones that kill momentum for the majority of people that are trying to do this, that are trying to improve their health, lose fat, improve their physique.
• 1:48
  Philip Pape: And then I'm going to give you what to do instead.
• 1:50
  Philip Pape: So if you're trying to just lean out, lose that last few pounds of fat, or you're getting started right now on your fat loss journey, stick around because avoiding these three traps could be the difference between continued frustration through the holidays and entering 2026 leaner and more confident than you've been in years.
• 2:09
  Philip Pape: All right, trap number one is misreading the scale and then making emotional decisions as a result.
• 2:16
  Philip Pape: This is the biggest one for sure.
• 2:18
  Philip Pape: It probably causes the most, I'll say, unnecessary stress.
• 2:22
  Philip Pape: And that is treating every single time you step on the scale like it's a performance review.
• 2:28
  Philip Pape: Okay, you step on the scale, and what happens?
• 2:31
  Philip Pape: You look at it's a number, it's up two pounds from yesterday.
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: And immediately your brain goes, I gain fat, I'm bigger, I'm heavier, why can't I lose the weight?
• 2:40
  Philip Pape: I'm gaining weight, my metabolism's slowing down, my diet stopped working, I need to cut calories, I need to add more cardio, whatever thought goes through your head in that moment.
• 2:48
  Philip Pape: And maybe take a pause and think about what that is for you right now.
• 2:52
  Philip Pape: The trap here is the big misunderstanding of the difference between signal and noise when it comes to scale weight.
• 3:00
  Philip Pape: Scale weight is tough, guys, because on one hand, I very much encourage using it as a tool.
• 3:06
  Philip Pape: On the other hand, it gets highly misused as something far from a tool.
• 3:12
  Philip Pape: So if you've listened to this show, you've heard me talk about this before, but I want to drive it home because it trips people up constantly.
• 3:18
  Philip Pape: Your body weight fluctuates a lot, a lot.
• 3:21
  Philip Pape: And almost none of that day-to-day fluctuation is actual fat gain or fat loss.
• 3:26
  Philip Pape: And I want you to think of it this way.
• 3:28
  Philip Pape: Okay, if you to gain two pounds of fat overnight, you would have to had eaten roughly 7,000 calories above your maintenance.
• 3:36
  Philip Pape: I talked about this on the last episode, I believe, right before Thanksgiving, about the numbers and the math behind this.
• 3:43
  Philip Pape: Did you actually eat 7,000 calories more than your maintenance yesterday?
• 3:47
  Philip Pape: No.
• 3:48
  Philip Pape: So what's actually happening?
• 3:49
  Philip Pape: Water.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: It all really comes down to water in all its different forms.
• 3:53
  Philip Pape: I know we like to have these long lifts, lists, but it really is fluid.
• 3:56
  Philip Pape: It's water.
• 3:57
  Philip Pape: Water can shift a lot due to things like stress, from stress or poor sleep, uh, higher sodium intake.
• 4:04
  Philip Pape: So you had the Chinese food or pizza last night, training fatigue and muscle inflammation, right?
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: Draws in fluid into your muscles, changes in your step count, even, where you are in your menstrual cycle, if you're a woman, carb intake, if you've been low carb, now you're eating more carbs or you're going from fat loss to maintenance.
• 4:22
  Philip Pape: If you started taking creatine, if you're digesting less or more and there's more or less food in your gut, so many things.
• 4:30
  Philip Pape: And it all comes down to water.
• 4:32
  Philip Pape: And these things can swing your scale weight by multiple pounds in a single day.
• 4:35
  Philip Pape: This is the tough thing.
• 4:36
  Philip Pape: None of that is fat, and yet we're trying to use the scale to measure fat along with some other things.
• 4:42
  Philip Pape: So, what do you do instead?
• 4:43
  Philip Pape: Well, from a weight perspective, you've got to look at some sort of trend.
• 4:48
  Philip Pape: And where a lot of people get this wrong is they'll take individual data points, like every Sunday they weigh themselves.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: That's not a trend that is, I'll say, responsive enough to give you good data.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: In fact, that could be even more misleading because every Sunday maybe a high point or a low point.
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: What if you're slowly losing fat over time?
• 5:08
  Philip Pape: But this Sunday it's a low point, and next Sunday is a high point.
• 5:11
  Philip Pape: It looks like you gained weight.
• 5:12
  Philip Pape: It's the opposite of what's actually happening fat-wise, even though that is reality of hey, you've got some more fluid in your body next Sunday, so you look heavier, but you're not really, but you don't actually have more body fat.
• 5:23
  Philip Pape: So this is where an app like Macrofactor uses a 20-day exponential moving average.
• 5:28
  Philip Pape: And this is a publicly known, you know, equation.
• 5:31
  Philip Pape: It's it's super simple.
• 5:33
  Philip Pape: I like moving averages, and I especially like this version of it.
• 5:36
  Philip Pape: This is over three weeks.
• 5:37
  Philip Pape: It's exponential, meaning the most recent data points matter the most.
• 5:41
  Philip Pape: So it takes your daily weights, it smooths them out.
• 5:43
  Philip Pape: You could see the actual direction and the pressure, I like to say, over time.
• 5:47
  Philip Pape: And by pressure, it means, again, whatever's happening most recently gets more weight, pun intended, I guess.
• 5:53
  Philip Pape: Rather than getting whipped around by every daily number, you're looking at that over time.
• 5:57
  Philip Pape: So if you're using that app, or if you're using my app fitness lab, I basically steal the same concept for exponential moving average.
• 6:03
  Philip Pape: In fact, here, this might be frustrating for some folks using the app.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: In the first 20 days, I've designed the app to be smart enough not to even tell you a number yet because it can't be relied upon.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: It'll say, hey, good job entering your weight.
• 6:15
  Philip Pape: We're still processing your signal weight.
• 6:18
  Philip Pape: It's what I call it, signal weight.
• 6:19
  Philip Pape: And so stick around.
• 6:20
  Philip Pape: After 20 days, we're gonna have good data to work from, which kind of reinforces the patient part of this process, the fact that this takes time.
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: And if you're too impatient to do that, if you're trying to just lose weight quickly, go ahead, lose water weight, cut carbs.
• 6:34
  Philip Pape: You're not losing any fat, you're not improving your body composition.
• 6:37
  Philip Pape: So what's the point, right?
• 6:39
  Philip Pape: If you want to do this the right way, you've gotta, you've gotta take a trend.
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're not using an app, you could do this yourself on a spreadsheet, or you can take just even a regular moving average over time.
• 6:51
  Philip Pape: I would still take at least, let's say, seven to 10 days worth of weights in a row and average them at least, and then compare that to the ongoing average, and that's the signal in the noise.
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: That's why I call it signal weight, by the way.
• 7:04
  Philip Pape: And when I work with clients, I'm always telling them, hey, the scale's data, it's not a verdict, it's information you're collecting collecting, just like your training log or your food log.
• 7:13
  Philip Pape: You don't emotionally react to how many grams of protein you ate yesterday, do you?
• 7:17
  Philip Pape: I mean, usually not, right?
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: Like, okay, I ate this many grams of protein.
• 7:20
  Philip Pape: It's not like, I only ate 20 grams of protein.
• 7:23
  Philip Pape: It's like just data.
• 7:25
  Philip Pape: You you just note it and then you adjust if needed, and you treat the scale the same way.
• 7:30
  Philip Pape: Now, why does this matter so much?
• 7:32
  Philip Pape: Because when people make emotional decisions based on anything, but especially based on a weigh-in on the scale, they do things that hurt their progress.
• 7:41
  Philip Pape: Then they're they cut calories impulsively, they add in more unnecessary, stressful movement like running or cardio like that.
• 7:49
  Philip Pape: They jump to another diet because this one isn't working.
• 7:53
  Philip Pape: And all of that creates instability in your system.
• 7:56
  Philip Pape: And when I work with clients, this is tough because in the first few weeks, you know, I'm promising some sort of results if you do the work, right?
• 8:04
  Philip Pape: Which is which you will get.
• 8:05
  Philip Pape: The problem is that result doesn't come immediately.
• 8:07
  Philip Pape: And sometimes individual markers like scale weight can give you the impression of the opposite happening.
• 8:12
  Philip Pape: We have to kind of talk off the ledge and use these numbers.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: And as an engineer, I think of metabolism like a control system.
• 8:19
  Philip Pape: If you keep jerking the inputs around based on this short-term noise, the system's never gonna get stable.
• 8:25
  Philip Pape: You need consistent inputs over time.
• 8:27
  Philip Pape: It's the same thing with your strength training.
• 8:28
  Philip Pape: You're not gonna get jacked in a week, right?
• 8:31
  Philip Pape: It takes time.
• 8:32
  Philip Pape: You make small deliberate adjustments based on the data and you look at the data as just that.
• 8:36
  Philip Pape: Hey, information.
• 8:37
  Philip Pape: So here's your action for this one.
• 8:39
  Philip Pape: For the next two weeks, I want you to weigh yourself every day at the same time under the same conditions.
• 8:44
  Philip Pape: That's usually in the morning, after you use the bathroom, before you eat or drink, and try your best.
• 8:50
  Philip Pape: Okay, I know it's easier said than done.
• 8:52
  Philip Pape: Try your best to not emotionally react to the individual number and just record it.
• 8:57
  Philip Pape: Okay, if you're using Fitness Lab, you do that in the morning metric log.
• 9:00
  Philip Pape: If you use another app, they have a different way to record it, or you can just record it on your own.
• 9:04
  Philip Pape: At the end of the week, I want you to calculate the average and compare it to the previous week.
• 9:09
  Philip Pape: Okay, so again, we're doing it at least two weeks.
• 9:11
  Philip Pape: So you have two kind of after the after seven days, you have like a seven-day moving average, if you will.
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: And then seven days after that, you have a new seven-day moving average.
• 9:19
  Philip Pape: See what the difference is.
• 9:20
  Philip Pape: And you'll see that they're not, they're probably not that much different, to be honest, because your weight's not going to change that much in two weeks unless you're drastically off with your you know energy balance.
• 9:29
  Philip Pape: All right, so that's trap number one, reacting to scale noise instead of waiting for the signal.
• 9:34
  Philip Pape: Trap number two is actually connected to this because it's often what happens when people do react emotionally.
• 9:42
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 9:43
  Philip Pape: So it's important.
• 9:44
  Philip Pape: We're like, okay, let's say we do react emotionally, then what?
• 9:47
  Philip Pape: Well, trap number two is overcorrecting with restriction instead of adjusting the system.
• 9:55
  Philip Pape: And this again, I see constantly because it's it's it's a sneaky thing because you feel like you're being disciplined and taking control and doing something to solve a problem, right?
• 10:07
  Philip Pape: It's this false sense of productivity.
• 10:09
  Philip Pape: When progress slows down or stalls, our immediate instinct is that I need to do more.
• 10:16
  Philip Pape: I need to cut the calories more.
• 10:18
  Philip Pape: I need to cut one of my macros, but usually carbs, I need to fast longer, I need to eat cleaner, quote unquote.
• 10:24
  Philip Pape: Try to add even more steps when you're already exhausted, jumping to a new program or new diet, because this one is clearly not working.
• 10:32
  Philip Pape: And I get it, I get it.
• 10:33
  Philip Pape: When you're not seeing results, doing more feels like the logical answer.
• 10:36
  Philip Pape: You're checking a box, you're changing something, you're solving a problem.
• 10:39
  Philip Pape: But that is the trap because doing more often destabilizes that system rather than optimizing it.
• 10:46
  Philip Pape: So that now you can see why it's kind of connected to the first trap.
• 10:50
  Philip Pape: I want to explain what I mean.
• 10:51
  Philip Pape: When you aggressively cut calories beyond what's sustainable, which many of you are doing, and you might be in that prop mode right now, especially with the holidays.
• 11:00
  Philip Pape: You're like, I need to cut or I need to be on a diet.
• 11:03
  Philip Pape: A few things happen when you cut calories beyond what's sustainable.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: Your training quality drops off a cliff because you don't have the fuel to push hard.
• 11:12
  Philip Pape: Your neat, that's non-exercise activity thermogenesis, basically, all the movement you do outside the gym goes down because your body conserves energy.
• 11:20
  Philip Pape: Your hunger hormones get off track and they go haywire.
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: You start to get hungry, cravings, starving.
• 11:27
  Philip Pape: Your recovery tanks.
• 11:29
  Philip Pape: So then it's even harder next time to get into the gym.
• 11:32
  Philip Pape: You might start losing muscle if now the calories are so low, you're not only training poorly, you're not getting enough protein, and it's a vicious cycle.
• 11:41
  Philip Pape: The irony is that all of that can make your scale weight stall even more because your body's now more stressed holding onto water, and you've compromised the very things that drive fat loss in the first place.
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: So for all of you reaching out to me on Instagram or email who are like, hey, I've cut calories, I'm eating as little as I can and I'm still not losing weight.
• 12:01
  Philip Pape: There's a problem behind that that's not about the calories.
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: It's probably about the approach.
• 12:07
  Philip Pape: You're probably doing too much and doing too much of the wrong things, and now you've destabilized and stressed the heck out of your system.
• 12:14
  Philip Pape: Because your body's adaptive.
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: That's the important thing here.
• 12:17
  Philip Pape: It's not a fixed machine.
• 12:19
  Philip Pape: It's adaptive.
• 12:20
  Philip Pape: It is not a simple input-output.
• 12:22
  Philip Pape: When you push too hard in one direction, it pushes back.
• 12:25
  Philip Pape: So what you have to do instead for this trap is make small, measured, very boring adjustments.
• 12:30
  Philip Pape: Don't be a hero.
• 12:33
  Philip Pape: And this is where sometimes, again, my clients they get frustrated because they're like, that's all you want me to change that one thing, but I want to do more.
• 12:39
  Philip Pape: I need to do more of this, more that, more that.
• 12:41
  Philip Pape: And actually, the coaching part comes into saying, let's not do those because you've done that in the past.
• 12:45
  Philip Pape: You see how well that worked for you.
• 12:47
  Philip Pape: Let's do this very deliberately.
• 12:48
  Philip Pape: And it's kind of like in Fitness Lab and my app.
• 12:51
  Philip Pape: I had people, you know, sign up, and then literally in one day the cancer, like, oh, this is not, this is not doing for me what I expect.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: Well, yeah, it's been one day.
• 12:58
  Philip Pape: Like that's the whole point, is you have to have the patience to do the daily boring things that are really going to pay off well.
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: And that's the point of this trap.
• 13:08
  Philip Pape: If fat loss has stalled, let's say for two or three weeks, based on the trend weight we talked about in trap one, right?
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: Not based on one weight in that you had that you popped two or three pounds, but based on the trend, then you look at the data and you make a small change.
• 13:21
  Philip Pape: Maybe you do drop calories.
• 13:23
  Philip Pape: There's nothing wrong with dropping calories if you're in that sustainable range of a deficit.
• 13:27
  Philip Pape: And many times you have to do that because your metabolism adapts a bit and things get a little tougher in terms of your deficit, tougher as in, you know, your body's not responding as well and you drop calories, maybe 100, 150 calories.
• 13:40
  Philip Pape: Maybe you do add a little bit of walking in, an extra mile of walking, that walk after lunch or dinner that you weren't doing.
• 13:45
  Philip Pape: You add those 2,000 steps in.
• 13:47
  Philip Pape: Maybe you do look at whether protein is where it needs to be, because sometimes when you're in a deficit and calories are low, people let the protein slip.
• 13:54
  Philip Pape: And really, you probably need more protein than when you're not in a deficit.
• 13:58
  Philip Pape: And that alone can cause some issues, right?
• 14:01
  Philip Pape: Because then you're more hungry, maybe you're not retaining as much muscle mass.
• 14:04
  Philip Pape: The point is that one variable at a time, a small magnitude of change, and then you wait and see what happens over another, say, two to three weeks before you make another adjustment.
• 14:15
  Philip Pape: So if you're out there saying, I'm gonna start creatine, I'm gonna start supplements, I'm gonna change my training, I'm gonna increase my protein, I'm gonna go in a deficit, stop right there.
• 14:22
  Philip Pape: You're going to hit an issue.
• 14:24
  Philip Pape: You're going to run into a wall because you're going to have no idea what's causing what, and you're going to definitely get frustrated.
• 14:29
  Philip Pape: A good, a good metaphor here for those of you who play guitar, for example.
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: I don't play guitar, but I can still relate to this.
• 14:34
  Philip Pape: It's like tuning a guitar.
• 14:36
  Philip Pape: You ever hear someone who's like ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding?
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: They're trying to tune the guitar, right?
• 14:41
  Philip Pape: You don't, they they turn the little tuning pegs at the top.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: You don't crank it all the way around, right?
• 14:46
  Philip Pape: You make that a little bit adjustment, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, to try to get into tune.
• 14:51
  Philip Pape: And I would think of that as your body.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: You're just trying to make that slight adjustment without snapping the string, right?
• 14:58
  Philip Pape: To get in tune.
• 14:59
  Philip Pape: I don't know if that helps you guys, but there's another version of this same trap that I did want to mention, which is the plan hopping mentality.
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: Any kind of plan or program, right?
• 15:08
  Philip Pape: You're on a program for three weeks.
• 15:09
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's your training program, maybe it's a nutrition or a lifestyle plan, maybe it's using my app, whatever.
• 15:15
  Philip Pape: And you don't see these dramatic results.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: And you're like, the program doesn't work.
• 15:19
  Philip Pape: So then you switch to a different program.
• 15:20
  Philip Pape: Three weeks later, same thing, switch again.
• 15:22
  Philip Pape: And maybe it's not three weeks, maybe it's three months, maybe it's one month.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: It doesn't matter.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: You haven't made those minor adjustments along the way to actually make sure it really works.
• 15:30
  Philip Pape: And you're not giving it time, time.
• 15:33
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: I remember a South Park episode from years ago where Cartman was in the hospital and his mom asked the doctor what's wrong.
• 15:40
  Philip Pape: He said, He just needs more time.
• 15:42
  Philip Pape: She's like, Yeah, but what's wrong?
• 15:43
  Philip Pape: He needs more time.
• 15:44
  Philip Pape: He needs a time transplant.
• 15:45
  Philip Pape: I thought that was hilarious.
• 15:46
  Philip Pape: So sometimes you need a time transplant to make sure you're giving it time to work because the physiological adaptation, that's your body changing.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: It takes time.
• 15:55
  Philip Pape: Fat loss takes time.
• 15:56
  Philip Pape: Every time you switch, you're essentially restarting the clock.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: So a good rule is as follows commit to a structured approach for at least eight to 12 weeks before making major changes.
• 16:08
  Philip Pape: How's that?
• 16:08
  Philip Pape: Eight to 12 weeks.
• 16:09
  Philip Pape: I just gave you a protocol.
• 16:11
  Philip Pape: And within that time frame is where you make those little adjustments as needed.
• 16:16
  Philip Pape: That's important, based on data.
• 16:18
  Philip Pape: You're not doing it for the whim or the heck of it.
• 16:20
  Philip Pape: You're doing it because data tells you it's worth experimenting.
• 16:23
  Philip Pape: And you don't know for sure that that change is going to do what you expect.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: You might have a certain level of confidence because let's say you listen to wits and weights, or you're using my app or working with a coach, or you just uh have learned enough about this, but you're not gonna blow up the whole approach because you're impatient, right?
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: Small, measurable, boring adjustments are always gonna beat these drastic swings every time.
• 16:47
  Philip Pape: That's how you work with your body being so nuanced and adaptive instead of fighting against it.
• 16:52
  Philip Pape: All right, before we get to trap number three, which might be the most important one, because it's the thing most people are underestimating.
• 17:00
  Philip Pape: I want to mention a free resource that ties directly into what we've been talking about.
• 17:04
  Philip Pape: I love to give free things away all the time.
• 17:06
  Philip Pape: I have lots of fun, helpful guides.
• 17:08
  Philip Pape: If you're trying to lose fat, if you want a structured starting point, if you're like, I don't even know where to start, right?
• 17:14
  Philip Pape: I don't want one of Philip's like huge 30-page guides that give you the whole thing.
• 17:18
  Philip Pape: I just want to know where to start.
• 17:20
  Philip Pape: I have a free guide I recently created called the 14-day rapid start fat loss guide.
• 17:25
  Philip Pape: Notice this is not rapid fat loss.
• 17:26
  Philip Pape: This is a rapid start fat loss guide.
• 17:29
  Philip Pape: And it simply gets you started.
• 17:31
  Philip Pape: It walks you through how to set up your nutrition and training for effective fat loss within a 14-day window to get you going with this approach, without the extreme restriction and all that other nonsense out there.
• 17:43
  Philip Pape: The very uh subtle, nuanced, patient but effective approach.
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash fat loss.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash fat loss or click the link in the show notes to grab it.
• 17:54
  Philip Pape: It's free.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: It's free.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: It'll give you a clear starting framework so you're not guessing, you're not doing more than you need to.
• 17:59
  Philip Pape: Again, that's witsandweights.com slash fat loss.
• 18:03
  Philip Pape: All right, so we've covered reacting to scale noise and overcorrecting with restriction.
• 18:08
  Philip Pape: Now let's talk about the trap that I think is the most underdiscussed in the mainstream end of year, like let's finish the year strong type content.
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: And it has to do with where you're putting your effort.
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: So trap number three is treating strength training as optional instead of the central driver of fat loss.
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: Now, if I've I'm losing you already because you listen and you lift and you lift all the time, you are far ahead of the vast majority of people.
• 18:39
  Philip Pape: You still may need to hear this message.
• 18:41
  Philip Pape: If you're listening and you don't lift weights regularly or consistently, you're not doing it in a way that you feel is giving you results, listen up.
• 18:48
  Philip Pape: What most people believe fat loss requires, or let me take that back.
• 18:53
  Philip Pape: Most people think in terms of weight loss, losing weight.
• 18:57
  Philip Pape: I don't do that.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: I think I like to talk about fat loss because what are you trying to do?
• 19:00
  Philip Pape: Drop body fat.
• 19:01
  Philip Pape: You're not trying to drop muscle too, are you?
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: No, you're trying to drop body fat and get leaner and healthier, not just get skinnier and weaker and lose muscle.
• 19:10
  Philip Pape: So a lot of people believe you need diet, cardio, willpower, and maybe some supplements.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: Notice in that list is not strength training for a lot of people, again, a lot of people out there.
• 19:21
  Philip Pape: That is often an afterthought.
• 19:22
  Philip Pape: I see it in articles.
• 19:24
  Philip Pape: I see it when people talk about heart health.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: I see it on commercials for weight loss medications.
• 19:30
  Philip Pape: They may not even mention it, or they'll say, like, I'm doing everything.
• 19:33
  Philip Pape: I'm in the gym.
• 19:34
  Philip Pape: I'm hitting it hard in the gym.
• 19:35
  Philip Pape: And they'll mention that one time.
• 19:36
  Philip Pape: And you're like, what are they actually doing in the gym?
• 19:38
  Philip Pape: And I'm not saying that they don't need the medication.
• 19:40
  Philip Pape: It's just always an afterthought.
• 19:42
  Philip Pape: It's something you do if you have extra time, right?
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: It's like the phrase when see, well, walking is enough.
• 19:46
  Philip Pape: At least get moving, right?
• 19:47
  Philip Pape: At least get moving.
• 19:48
  Philip Pape: Walking should be enough.
• 19:49
  Philip Pape: No, it's not.
• 19:50
  Philip Pape: No, it's not.
• 19:51
  Philip Pape: And a lot of people will think, okay, I need to go strength training because I want to bulk up or tone up or get muscular.
• 19:57
  Philip Pape: It's not about that either.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: Or I'm going to wait till I've lost the weight, then I'm going to start strength training.
• 20:03
  Philip Pape: All of that, that belief is the big trap here because strength training is not a supporting element of fat loss.
• 20:10
  Philip Pape: It is the primary metabolic lever of fat loss.
• 20:14
  Philip Pape: Period.
• 20:14
  Philip Pape: You could be deficient on protein, even carbs.
• 20:18
  Philip Pape: You can be not walking very much.
• 20:21
  Philip Pape: You could have a lot of stuff not going super well.
• 20:24
  Philip Pape: But if strength training is in there, that is the massive anchor for fat loss.
• 20:29
  Philip Pape: And you can still be moderately successful, even if all those other things are suboptimal.
• 20:33
  Philip Pape: But if you're not strength training, all those things can be optimal and you're not going to lose fat.
• 20:37
  Philip Pape: That's my point.
• 20:38
  Philip Pape: You're going to lose muscle.
• 20:39
  Philip Pape: You're just not going to lose fat.
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: You have to be strength training.
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: And it's not just about muscle and fat loss, it's metabolism and metabolic health.
• 20:46
  Philip Pape: And if you're not treating it that way, you're leaving a massive amount of progress on the table.
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: It affects your health span, your lifespan, your mind span, all of it for the rest of your life.
• 20:56
  Philip Pape: Let me explain why.
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: Just let's let's revisit this together, guys.
• 21:00
  Philip Pape: When you lose weight without strength training, a significant portion of that weight is going to come from muscle.
• 21:06
  Philip Pape: Your body simply doesn't need it because you're not using it.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: You might see the scale go down, but you end up softer, weaker, more frail with a slower metabolism than when you start it.
• 21:19
  Philip Pape: Skinny fat is a term, you may not like it, but sometimes called that, or you're lighter on the scale, but you're not leaner, you're not healthier.
• 21:26
  Philip Pape: When you strength train while losing weight, you send the signal to your body, hey, this muscle is important, don't break it down for energy.
• 21:34
  Philip Pape: Go after the fat stores instead.
• 21:36
  Philip Pape: That's what it does.
• 21:37
  Philip Pape: And then your body listens.
• 21:39
  Philip Pape: You preserve and even potentially build muscle while losing fat.
• 21:42
  Philip Pape: If you're newer to this, that's body recomposition, which means you end up looking like you've transformed, which is what we all want, rather than just shrinking.
• 21:52
  Philip Pape: But as I've alluded to several times, the benefits go far beyond just preserving muscle during a diet because muscle tissue, it's metabolically active.
• 21:59
  Philip Pape: The more you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate.
• 22:02
  Philip Pape: So that's pretty cool.
• 22:03
  Philip Pape: You burn a few more calories just existing, and you're probably gonna be able to carry more scale weight at the end of the day and still be lean, and that burns more calories.
• 22:11
  Philip Pape: You also burn more calories because you're training more and you're using your muscle and you're moving all day or most of the day.
• 22:17
  Philip Pape: Over time, this is gonna make fat loss even easier and allow you to eat more food while staying lean.
• 22:23
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like having your cake and making it and eating it and having it again too.
• 22:28
  Philip Pape: I don't know if that makes any sense.
• 22:30
  Philip Pape: It's not about the cake, it's a metaphor, guys.
• 22:32
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: Muscle also improves insulin sensitivity, which is a hot topic these days, probably for good reason.
• 22:39
  Philip Pape: It means your body handles carbohydrates better.
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: It stabilizes your appetite hormones, your hunger hormones.
• 22:45
  Philip Pape: It shapes your physique in ways that cardio never will, never, never, never will.
• 22:50
  Philip Pape: Don't think that running is a thing that makes you lean and muscular or toned or whatever.
• 22:54
  Philip Pape: It doesn't.
• 22:55
  Philip Pape: The definition in your arms, the curves of your shoulders, those delt caps, the strength in your legs, that defined back.
• 23:02
  Philip Pape: None of that comes from running.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: Strength training also enables you to eat more food during fat loss and then afterward during maintenance, especially.
• 23:10
  Philip Pape: Some people are surprised at how much food they can eat now.
• 23:12
  Philip Pape: In fact, they feel like they have to eat more food than they really want.
• 23:16
  Philip Pape: And there's tricks for that.
• 23:17
  Philip Pape: It's called calorie density, because you have more muscle driving your metabolism and you don't have to live on a lighter metabolism like you used to.
• 23:25
  Philip Pape: Now, I'm not saying it's gonna go up by hundreds and hundreds of calories necessarily, but you should be able to feel like a normal human being when it comes to your food and not be dieting most of the year.
• 23:34
  Philip Pape: Now, a lot of you have these misconceptions or quotes in your head, like I don't want to get bulky or just try to lose fat first, then I'll lift.
• 23:42
  Philip Pape: I want to address both of those especially.
• 23:44
  Philip Pape: Okay, the first one, you're not gonna actually accidentally get bulky, guys and ladies.
• 23:48
  Philip Pape: Building significant muscle takes years of dedicated training.
• 23:51
  Philip Pape: Eating in a surplus, many of those years, optimal programming, somewhat, right?
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: But it's really the time put into it.
• 23:59
  Philip Pape: It doesn't happen by accident, especially not for women, and especially not while you're constantly dieting.
• 24:05
  Philip Pape: What will happen is you're going to look tighter, more defined.
• 24:10
  Philip Pape: You're gonna look stronger when you add muscle.
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 24:13
  Philip Pape: And I always joke that as a man with a decent amount of testosterone in my 40s, I have a very, very hard time trying to quote unquote bulk up.
• 24:21
  Philip Pape: Second is waiting until you've lost weight to start lifting.
• 24:24
  Philip Pape: And that is totally backward.
• 24:25
  Philip Pape: Like lifting should be number one.
• 24:27
  Philip Pape: So I still hear health professionals, a lot of this is in the wellness space, people that aren't really experts on strength and lifting.
• 24:35
  Philip Pape: Maybe they don't even do it themselves as much as they should.
• 24:38
  Philip Pape: And they they somehow imply that lifting isn't like the most important thing.
• 24:42
  Philip Pape: Or, you know, you could do Pilates or you could do yoga.
• 24:44
  Philip Pape: It's not true.
• 24:45
  Philip Pape: The lifting is what ensures that you lose fat and not muscle.
• 24:48
  Philip Pape: It's what shapes the body you're revealing as you get leaner.
• 24:51
  Philip Pape: And if you wait, you're just gonna end up at your goal weight looking nothing like you imagined because you lost the muscle, as we've said several times already.
• 24:59
  Philip Pape: Now, I would go so far as to say that for people over 40, and you know, that's not a magic number.
• 25:05
  Philip Pape: It's just around the age when, you know, things start to go downhill for people.
• 25:10
  Philip Pape: And so honestly, for anyone who wants sustainable results, strength training is the single highest ROI that's return on investment.
• 25:18
  Philip Pape: It's the highest return activity you can do for your body.
• 25:21
  Philip Pape: Far higher than cardio.
• 25:22
  Philip Pape: In fact, cardio could have a negative return in some cases, far higher than any diet trick, even though nutrition and calorie balance does control how much fat you're storing.
• 25:34
  Philip Pape: Still, I would say strength training is a higher return than anything.
• 25:38
  Philip Pape: Definitely higher than any supplement.
• 25:39
  Philip Pape: Supplements are way down there for return.
• 25:41
  Philip Pape: So if you're only doing two or three things for your health and body composition, strength training should be one of them.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: Full stop.
• 25:47
  Philip Pape: And you don't have to live in the gym to see these benefits.
• 25:49
  Philip Pape: Three days a week, even two if you have to, I would say three is a good minimum.
• 25:54
  Philip Pape: Just focused, progressive resistance training.
• 25:58
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 25:58
  Philip Pape: The main lifts, it could be a home gym, it could be, you know, you're going to the gym.
• 26:03
  Philip Pape: It doesn't matter.
• 26:03
  Philip Pape: I just mean you don't have to live in the gym.
• 26:04
  Philip Pape: You could do it with a fairly minimum effective program to build significant muscle and transform your physique, maybe three to four hours a week total.
• 26:12
  Philip Pape: And compare that to the hours people seem to spend on cardio machines or obsessing over their diets.
• 26:18
  Philip Pape: I think strength training is going to give you more return per hour invested than almost anything else in life you can do.
• 26:24
  Philip Pape: And it will pay back financially, confidence-wise, career-wise, relationship-wise, everything else as well.
• 26:30
  Philip Pape: Not to mention long-term health and longevity.
• 26:32
  Philip Pape: So let's connect these three traps because they are all related.
• 26:36
  Philip Pape: Trap one is about reacting emotionally to short-term data instead of making decisions based on trends.
• 26:42
  Philip Pape: Trap two is about overcorrecting when you see a stall and making drastic changes that destabilize your progress.
• 26:48
  Philip Pape: And trap three is about misallocating your effort, putting energy into cardio and diet hacks when the real lever is strength training.
• 26:56
  Philip Pape: And when you fix all three, then you get a great system that works for you.
• 27:00
  Philip Pape: You can collect data without the emotional attachment.
• 27:04
  Philip Pape: You can make small, smart adjustments when needed.
• 27:06
  Philip Pape: And then you can prioritize the very activity that builds the metabolic foundation for long-term.
• 27:12
  Philip Pape: Leaness, that is how you finish 2025 strong and set yourself up for 2026.
• 27:18
  Philip Pape: Now, before we wrap up, I want to leave you with one more thought that might reframe how you're thinking about all of this.
• 27:23
  Philip Pape: Most people approach fat loss as something they need to survive.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: Like you're, it's a period of deprivation that you have to get through so that you can enjoy your life after it.
• 27:34
  Philip Pape: Like a period of suffering.
• 27:36
  Philip Pape: But what if it wasn't?
• 27:38
  Philip Pape: What if fat loss is something that you use, that it's a very powerful tool?
• 27:42
  Philip Pape: Think about it.
• 27:43
  Philip Pape: A fat loss phase is a period where you're in a calorie deficit, your body's primed to tap into stored energy.
• 27:49
  Philip Pape: And that is creating conditions for change.
• 27:51
  Philip Pape: So the question is, what kind of change are you what you used to think of as suffering through?
• 27:56
  Philip Pape: But in this case, we're going to reframe that.
• 27:58
  Philip Pape: If you're just cutting calories and you're doing more cardio, the change is that you get smaller, probably weaker, and your metabolism adapts downward and probably doesn't come back until you, you know, do something different.
• 28:10
  Philip Pape: If you're strength training, eating enough protein, managing your recovery, the change is different.
• 28:16
  Philip Pape: Now you are, for lack of a better phrase, sculpting your body.
• 28:20
  Philip Pape: You're revealing muscle that you've built.
• 28:22
  Philip Pape: You're teaching your body to be efficient and strong.
• 28:25
  Philip Pape: And fat loss becomes a tool for transformation instead of a period of restriction that you have to endure.
• 28:31
  Philip Pape: And it doesn't have to be very long either.
• 28:33
  Philip Pape: So when you approach it that way, the experience changes, right?
• 28:36
  Philip Pape: It's not the white knuckling, it's not a quote unquote diet.
• 28:40
  Philip Pape: I'm dieting, I have to be hungry, I have to be fatigued.
• 28:43
  Philip Pape: No, you're still training hard, you're eating well, you're recovering, you're doing this in a moderate way, and you're watching your body change in ways that excite you and motivate you to keep going for the short period that it is.
• 28:55
  Philip Pape: That's the mindset shift I want you to make heading into the end of the year.
• 28:59
  Philip Pape: I don't necessarily want you to be doing a fat loss phase going into the end of the year.
• 29:02
  Philip Pape: That's your call.
• 29:03
  Philip Pape: But stop thinking about how much you have to take away and start thinking about what you are building.
• 29:09
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 29:10
  Philip Pape: So if you want help putting all this into practice with structured training, education, support, accountability, I really have two options for you.
• 29:19
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna today talk just talk about physique university for a second.
• 29:23
  Philip Pape: That's the community-based program that we have.
• 29:26
  Philip Pape: So people have been asking, what's the difference between the app and physique university?
• 29:29
  Philip Pape: Well, Fitness Lab, the app is, you know, it's on your own, but it's a lot of support and prompting via AI, where it gives you your training, your nutrition support, it gives you daily activities, it gives you an AI coach to talk to, all of that.
• 29:43
  Philip Pape: Whereas Physique University, what I'm talking about now, is community based, right?
• 29:47
  Philip Pape: We have Coach Carol and I are in there responding to you, you know, human beings responding directly through not only the community itself, but also live coaching calls and workshops and challenges.
• 29:57
  Philip Pape: We actually have a challenge starting December.
• 30:00
  Philip Pape: 10th.
• 30:00
  Philip Pape: I'll be talking about that more in the next few episodes.
• 30:03
  Philip Pape: But it's a strong finished challenge to keep you accountable for the final hardest three weeks of the year.
• 30:08
  Philip Pape: But if you're looking for some strength training templates or workout programs, tools to track your physique, you know, how much muscle am I building, how much fat am I losing?
• 30:16
  Philip Pape: You want to reach out to other students going through the same process.
• 30:20
  Philip Pape: You want to reach out to coaches and join live calls, plus check out some of our curriculum.
• 30:23
  Philip Pape: That is what's in there to help you lose fat, lean out, get stronger, feel great, and put in place a sustainable system for you.
• 30:31
  Philip Pape: So go to wits and weights.com slash physique and learn about it.
• 30:34
  Philip Pape: I'm not saying you have to sign up.
• 30:35
  Philip Pape: Go check it out.
• 30:36
  Philip Pape: We've got a demo video there.
• 30:37
  Philip Pape: We've got videos from other members.
• 30:39
  Philip Pape: It explains everything.
• 30:40
  Philip Pape: So I would just go check it out.
• 30:42
  Philip Pape: Witsandweights.com slash physique.
• 30:44
  Philip Pape: Link in the show notes.
• 30:46
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember that your body is capable of incredible transformation when you give it the right signals and time to respond.
• 30:56
  Philip Pape: I'm Philip Pape and this is the Wits and Weights Podcast.
• 31:00
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time.